motorcycles

A Dragon’s Den star who heads up a massive beer, wine and spirits empire. The only female master distiller in the province. And production manager at the 2021 Canadian Brewery of the Year. The spirits and beer scene is going strong in Calgary, and women are front and centre, as I discover during a recent visit.    . An hour’s drive south of Calgary, in the bucolic town of Turner Valley, Winnipeg-born, Scotland-raised Caitlin Quinn is the master distiller at Eau Claire Distillery, the first boutique distillery in Alberta. Quinn got an undergrad degree chemistry, but quickly realized it wouldn’t lead Read more

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND – You gotta love the Kiwis. They have a reputation of being something like we Canadians. But when it comes to tourism, they certainly seem to be more “out there” than we are. I’ll have some examples of this coming up in the next week or two, as I take you on a tour of Matamata (where they filmed much of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit), Rotorua (where I rode a sail-powered go-kart and a spinning contraption called a drift-kar), Picton and Marlborough (a wine tour and a kayak trip), Kaikoura (a chartered plane Read more

HALIFAX – Great food. A beautiful harbour. Super-friendly people. And, just for good measure, a tour of the city in a motorcycle sidecar. There’s something very cool about Halifax. The weather is unpredictable. But the city’s other attributes make up for what might be lacking in the meteorological department. I’ve written in the past about the city’s great food scene, and I had a chance to try a couple new spots this time around. We had dinner again at Press Gang , which is an old building that dates back to 1759. There are exposed stone and brick walls and Read more